Have you seen this ad in your newspaper or mail or on TV? "Consumer Reports ranks Road Runner higher than Verizon Broadband. Another reason to smile." Or similar ads comparing Road Runner to BellSouth FastAccess DSL or SBC Yahoo DSL service?

I'm not smiling, our lawyers aren't smiling, and our readers definitely aren't smiling; almost 150 of you have told us so. Those readers, and millions more, know that Consumer Reports accepts no advertising, is beholden to no commercial interests, and does not allow our Ratings or reports to be used by others for advertising or to promote a product or service.

There's good reason for our policy. As the campaign by Time Warner Cable illustrates perfectly, using our Ratings in ads can easily mislead consumers into thinking that we granted permission for such use and that the ad accurately reflects our findings. And that would compromise our reputation for independence.

Some readers who saw the Road Runner ads wrote to ask if our policy prohibiting commercial use of our Ratings has changed. No, it most definitely has not. We promptly objected to the ads, but initially heard nothing back from Time Warner Cable. Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, and our readers were angry that the ads continued. After some legal back and forth, a Time Warner Cable representative told us the company will honor our policy from now on. That's to their credit and they're in good company; virtually all the major U.S. manufacturers and service providers whose products and services we rate respect our no-commercial-use policy.

Our report, published in the September 2005 issue, ranked Internet service providers on the basis of overall customer satisfaction and states clearly that differences in scores of fewer than five points aren't meaningful. Our Consumer ISP Satisfaction Survey ranked Road Runner only two points ahead of SBC Yahoo and Verizon and only three points ahead of BellSouth. Road Runner, although among the higher-rated cable services, performed no better than a number of other cable broadband companies in speed or reliability. Significantly, Road Runner's price prevented it from joining SBC Yahoo DSL and Verizon DSL as a Quick Pick for best value in broadband service. Road Runner is indeed highly rated in several survey categories, but the ads misled consumers by selectively using the survey findings.

All of us at Consumers Union are proud of our reputation for complete independence from commercial interests. We do not allow our trademark or Ratings to be used by anyone else without our explicit written permission, nor do we accept payment for our Ratings or reviews, nor endorse any product or service over another.

Please continue to let us know if you see any company using our name or our Ratings to push their product. You can e-mail us at nocomm@legal.consumer.org. We very much appreciate the diligence of our readers and the trust you put in our testing, research, and reporting.

So that you can see how Internet service providers were rated by nearly 26,000 readers in our 2005 survey, we're posting the full article from our September issue free on our Web site. (In general, online Ratings are available only to our Web site subscribers.)

Thanks for your trust in Consumer Reports and your help in protecting our reputation. We'll continue to do everything necessary to defend it.

Jim Guest President